Clever
by JealousOfTheMoon
Summary: Maybe Aslan puts the stars in the sky and gives each a song. But then we have become truly dark, our eyes blinded and our ears deaf. We have all become Dumb. PC-verse.


_I've had this story in my head for well nigh six months now but was just recently kicked into writing it by the author's note on _**Dearheart**_'s _'A Dance 'Round The Memory Tree.'_ Since today is her birthday (well, it will be for the next two hours at any rate) and since she inspired this, here's a happy birthday from me and a (sort of) birthday present. Honestly, it's a rather dark story and it doesn't have a happy ending in and of itself so if you'd like another I think I can manage it._

_This is bothverse. Inspired by the movie, but works well (I think) with book. I'm not going to give anything away about this; it's y'all's to read. -edit- Good gracious me! I forgot to give disclaimers and (more importantly still) forgot to give credit for the italicized line some paragraphs down which is a movie quote. There ya have it; t'ain't mine.  
_

_I had an explanatory note on the end but it was distracting so I took it off. If anyone has questions, PMs and reviews work well.  
_

_

* * *

_

**Clever**–_by JotM_

Grull had always been a clever Bear. On honey-hunts with other Bears, he was the first to find a sweetly-laden tree and the last in the bee-sting tally at the end. "Such a smart Bear!" his parents (and second cousins and neighbors and friends from far away) sighed often with pride—and not without reason. Bears, even Talking Bears, are not renowned for their remarkable thinking abilities, but Grull was an exceptional Bear.

Five steps behind Grull (maybe more, but never less, than five) came the youngest Bulgy Bear. No one had really bothered to give him a first name; they called him 'Bulge' according to the family name. Bulge was the one forever tripping over his own paws. He never had anything important to say, and many whispered that he wasn't altogether...you know..._there. _His friends treated him with an indulgent smile and tried their best not to laugh.

"You're not smart, Bulge," his parents would say, "but—you do your best."

If Bulge ever thought bitterly to himself that his parents meant his best was really much worse than most other Beasts', he never let on when the rest of us were around. As a young bear he kept up with his weekly shuffling along to the little school of sorts which was taught by Glenstorm the Centaur. Glenstorm was tall and strong and proud and wise and everything a little Bulgy Bear should like to be! We mostly learned how to tell direction from the stars (so our mothers didn't worry about us getting lost), but often he would tell tales in the stars from the Histories of Narnia. Sometimes Glenstorm would invite us out late at night and murmur to us the meanings of the dance of the stars. We didn't understand half of what was said, and the parts we understood we never thought about believing.

Once during a stargazing session, I remember Bulge asking Master Glenstorm, "Does Aslan put the stars in their places?"

"Indeed he does," Glenstorm answered, looking with more pride at Bulge than perhaps anyone had before in the Bear's life.

"And give them their songs?" Bulge persisted.

"Every note," affirmed the centaur. Someone snorted then and muttered "_I_ can't hear nothing." Glenstorm looked around sharply, but every student's gaze was fixed skywards.

"Load of rubbish," Grull complained to me the next day as he trudged home with Bulge a few steps behind and myself huffing along at his side. "Aslan. Pah! Bulge here is thick enough without Glen fogging up his head with notions of _Aslan."_

"I don't know—" I began hesitantly.

"Come on!" Grull broke in impatiently. "Don't pretend to believe all that stuff. After a few more of these lessons, I'll have convinced Father I've seen enough and then none of it will be worth remembering anymore. Bulge is convinced. So what?"

I risked a glance back in Bulge's direction, but by his expression he wasn't paying attention.

"Bulge is my friend," Grull added quickly—almost impatiently, his gaze following mine, "but we all know his mind ain't the best."

"No, it ain't," Bulge agreed unexpectedly with a shrug, his entry into the conversation causing me to jump a little. Grull only raised his eyebrows in surprise. "But it's what Aslan gave me."

"I suppose Aslan gave us Telmarine tyrants and dead family and a life of skulking about like Dumb Beasts when he gave us our minds, too!" Grull grunted, not even looking at Bulge as he spoke.

"I know Aslan gives me hope," Bulge sounded patient, as though he was explaining a difficult concept to someone of lesser wit. It was an almost laughable tone on someone like Bulge. "Maybe he just lets me have the other stuff 'coz I couldn't even understand what hope was 'till Master Glen told me that you after your mum's death was someone who was hope_less._"

Grull stopped mid-stride, causing Bulge to almost walk into his back. "We don't talk about that," he said tersely. If any skin had shown on his face, it probably would have been drained of color. "Anyway," he shook his head and resumed his stride, "_I _knew what hope was without Glen's prying into other people's business to show me."

"Did yer?" Bulge persisted, to the great surprise of both Grull and myself. Bulge's mind usually lost a topic as quickly as it picked it up. "_Do_ ya? Yer don't believe in Aslan. _I_ believe in Aslan."

"Yer stupid," Grull muttered moodily. "An' I suppose you believe in the Kings and Queens an' a Witch and everything."

"Well, maybe Aslan's waiting now - Aslan _did_ wait one hunnerd years while everything was _covered_ in ice—" Bulge began happily. I watched, fascinated—I had never seen him so excited and _focused_ about anything before—but Grull had had enough.

""An' where'd all that ruddy ice go?" he howled, whirling on the younger bear so quickly that this time Bulge did walk into him. The smaller bear backed away slowly. "I s'pose it melted inner t'earth with nary sight nor smell of a bloomin' c'tastrophe, which's what Master Glenstorm always talks about when he talks about dirt 'n'things!"

"It—it was enchanted ice," Bulge answered faintly in his silly, slow way of talking, "and—and Aslan broke—"

"What's _enchanted_ mean?" Grull challenged, knowing the answer full well himself and asking for the sake of showing—

"It—a—I—I dunno," poor Bulge stammered, looking close to tears now. Grull was sharp-tongued in general but he usually refrained from yelling at the slower Bear.

"There ya have it," Grull smiled condescendingly, his point established. "Yer a dumb beast an' I don't expect you'll learn, but try not to forget _this._ Yeh shouldn't be happy with a slow mind, Bulge - our minds are what make us diff'rent from all the Dumb Beasts lumberin' 'round these woods, tearin' each other apart."

"M-Master Glenstorm says Aslan sets us apart," Bulge maintained staunchly and (I thought) bravely.

"You haven't talked ter Aslan, nor even seen him yet, nor have I - nor anyone we know. You remember that. What're _you_ thinkin'?" he rounded on me suddenly. It was only when I was confronted by a snarling mouth of small but very sharp teeth that I realized I'd been standing stock still watching the proceedings with my own mouth hanging wide.

Hastily, I closed my mouth and then opened it again and answered: "I think—well, I mean, Bulge _has_ remembered him longer than he remembers most things, but I think you're right all the same," I took a deep breath, trying to think things through rationally. Clearly both Bulge and Grull were affected by their own emotions and such but I—perhaps I could provide a bit more of the rational. Ah yes, there it was. "I mean, none of us have ever seen Him—Aslan, that is—and, well, as you say, really, there's no _evidence_ of the Hundred Years Winter or the Four or—or—or anything, really. I'll believe it when I see it, yes, _that's_ what I'll do."

"Good lad," Grull beamed, and clapped me on the back. I staggered a few paces, stopping myself just before I inserted myself, headfirst, into a tree. By the time I had rejoined them, Grull was lecturing Bulge about the latter's embarrassing paw-sucking habits.

_You get treated like a dumb animal long enough, that's what you become._ _You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember._

Many long years later, I drove my blade into the neck of a barely-living bear. A wild thing that tried to eat a little girl but perhaps it still deserved some pity – perhaps it had been, as I said, treated as dumb all its life. Perhaps the four children can give it that pity, and perhaps they should—shielded from the knowledge that the blackness that held my—their—land captive was deeper than the brutal treatment of a thousand Telmarines.

Maybe Aslan puts the stars in the sky and gives each a song, every note falling as though from the lips of the Great Lion Himself. If so, then we have become truly dark, our eyes blinded and our ears deaf. We cannot see the stars, much less hear them. We have all become Dumb.

The bear's blood spattered my knife, my tunic, my hands, and I wept, for I knew him.

Grull had always been a clever Bear.


End file.
